Bookpile 6: Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds, edited by Michelle Bastian, Owain Jones, Niamh Moore, and Emma Roe.
Another academic one on the bookpile. This one has been waiting for a shorter period than my previous neglected read (The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism, which I wrote about recently). A few months ago, I wanted to do a literature review on how participatory research (research that, to put it in as few words as possible, tries to foreground the experience and agency of those it is working with or trying to understand) is being done beyond human contexts. Enter Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds, a collection from 2017 edited by Michelle Bastian, Owain Jones, Niamh Moore, and Emma Roe. It's twelve chapters representing ways of considering non-human/more-than-human parties as real participants. Initially, I got through a couple chapters and then got busy with other things.
This week, beginning two new projects that both relate to respectfully including participants beyond humans in social science research, I've picked it up again. I started with the chapter on beagles used in animal testing. It was heartbreaking and fascinating, articulating the tension between the basic values of participatory research (participants should have agency and should be allowed to withdraw from research at any time) and the selective breeding of beagles to be more pliable and cooperative research subjects. How can we see the beagle as having the possibility to object when its very nature has been moulded over the course of decades to be willing?
Beyond the beagles, this collection includes differing and critical takes on how we can understand the roles that might be played by non-humans in research, and what different modes of listening might be needed from researchers.
